I am not sure that the three parts (performance, directions, writing) can really help me in this directory; the subjects are wrong for serious analysis (I better focus of the new listing "topics" (above). The Book of Spectator and Virtual Theatre directories represent the two sides of the same process (philosophy and technology, but they have the same organization -- writer, actor, director and etc.)
Why did I place "Part IV. Textbooks" here?
.... To separate what I know from what I don't know ("theory of the future")?
See Publish: the most developed web-textbooks projects -- Biomechanics, StageMatrix, System of the Method, Playscript Analysis of the Century.
Since I work the textbooks from the web, the web-version is bigger and the books will be supported by the web.
I want to have CDs to accompany the print copies. [Text-only Directories will be @ Ant Theatre and GeoAlaska]
The class-syllabus is enclosed (Appendix) in each webtextbook.
See listing for titles!
Make polls to see the reactions.
Should the organization of the textbooks rely on the class structure?
In order to get rid of the endless notes, I opened Research directory and will place the cuts there; the texts that do not belong to textbooks.
There are several stages ahead. First, I have to go over the printed copies -- and see what is missing.
Second, I have to try the new principle of narrative: Stanislavsky and Meyerhold (to see if this style, the dialogues, will work).
Third, a lot of work with the apparatus; dictionary, notes, index, bibliography.
I have to leave the class structure, including the homework section. Some files are big (chapters), some small -- must be combined together? Which ones to drop?
Time is another problem. I fear to send my proposals, because I do not know my year ahead.
The Work of Living Art: A Theory of the Theatre by H. D. Albright, Adolphe Appia, Barnard Hewitt; University of Miami Press, 1960 - Adolphe Appia and "The Work of Living Art"
- Preface
- 1. the Elements
- 2. Living Time
- 3. Living Space
- 4. Living Color
- 5. Organic Unity
- 6. Collaboration
- 7. the Great Unknown and the Experience of Beauty
- 8. Bearers of the Flame
- Designs
- Adolphe Appia's "Man is the Measure of All Things" (protagoras)
Drama / Theatre / Performance by Simon Shepherd, Mick Wallis; Routledge, 2004 - Part One: A Genealogy
- 1: Drama and Theatre as University Subjects
- 2: Drama and the Literary Tradition
- 3: History, Theatre, Society
- 4: The Essence of Drama
- 5: Women, Theatre and the Ethics of the Academy
- 6: Performance, Art and the Avant Garde
- 7: The Rise of Performance Studies
- 8: Performance Studies: Some Basic Concepts
- 9: Postmodernism and Performance
- 10: Recent Mappings of Drama-Theatre- Performance
- Part Two: Keywords
- Action
- Aleatory
- Catharsis
- Character, Mask, Person
- Defamiliarisation and Alienation
- Embodiment
- Empathy
- Interculturalism
- Kinaesthetic
- Mimesis
- Performativity
- Presence and Representation
- Semiotics and Phenomenology
They are done online and I continue editing and writing; there are many errors and missing parts...
I really want to put behind the teaching. Well, here is a problem. I am quite sure that I do not want to write textbooks, not the normal ones (that's why is this madness with the Plato Academy and Platonic Girls, dialogues and scenes). I feel that even the textbooks must be written in POMO tradition, with a new style and new forms. Why must it be boring? Why this serious tone? It's just a textbook! For kids! For actors! And -- on theatre! I feel as if I to betray the game and play, the very phenomena of theatricality. Oh gods, have mercy on me...
Let me explain. I made a new page game in student directory; to find the new way of reading my webpages -- it shoudl be a game! Textbooks on theatre must be dramatic! They must be funny -- since we talk talk about what is known and should be known by you, who study theatre (definition of comedy). Could theatre textbooks be tragic? Yes, there are many questions we have no answers for at all! Besides, this is not only 21st century but the 3rd millenium, fo God' sake!
Maybe you missed my confessional pages, so I should repeat myself:
I am a postmodernist by birth (I was born in the Soviet Union), but not that revolutionary type (Meyerhold, Russia went through the intellectual revolutions of the 1968 Euasope in the twenties): I am a post-pomo (ppm man). I can't stand any ideology, even in the form of a textbook. I believe that Mozart has no less philisophy than Kant, I believe that we could and should study Chekhov as we study Sartre, we must see metaphysics of Bergman (if indeed we understand the new language of film and its forms of discourse)... In short, it's time to rethink how we teach, if we are serious about ourselves and our new brave world.
Yes, I know, the postmodernism got a bad name in pop-academia, but it will pass. Too bad that many postmodernists by convictions do not practice the postmodern; even wrioting about it they use the old Newtonian formats. Should textbooks about theatre be in pictures and sounds? Yes, we can teach and learn math without formulas, how can we study theatre without theatricality?
No, I do not denounce the past -- I am full of it! My students are tired of Aristotle and Brecht. I told you, I am ppm creature, I hate manifestos, because I was raised on them. I struggle with the system (Stanislavsky or Meyerhold), but I USE them to go beyond the systematic (creative mode). So, what about the textbooks, which are by definition must be like a multiplication table?
Oh, mighty Apollo (on the left -- click and go to the Virtual Theatre Files), please, come and restore the order and harmony in his directory! Away with the madness (for a while)! Give us logic and reason!
I hear the sound of reason! The songs of the mind! Oh, I see the Plato Academy members! No girls, no parties! It's the morning after.... Let this drunk Dionysis (right, click on to go for nonfiction) rest, let him sleep, so he won't mess my files, he is old, he is tired, he is snoring, he smiles in his dreams....
Now, go and read the textbooks and good books, kid! Do your homework! See you there! See you later!
Anatoly
PS. I began to orginize web-directories on different subjects (classes) and they all got too many pages to leave them as my notes only. I like the process, it helps me with the actual classes. Although I still use the textbooks (hard copies), more and more I refer my student to my webpages. And of course, you, the surfers, can use them as well.
The textbooks online do not follow the actual class schedule, I try to make them self-contained, so anybody can use them without being in my class.
For example, this very directory is to be organized as a web-book on Theatre Theory (not right away). In addition to the traditional analytical horizon, there must be some artistic format. Of course, I didn't find it yet. Plato-style dialogues? Five act Shakesperian structure (dramatic + epic?)... Multi-vocal narrative? Who knows? We, the ppm humans, are the new primitives; we lived outside of the "traditional history" and should be simple, should follow our own conditions and fate. We are those pre-Aristotelian Greeks, when our philosophy is our "goat songs" -- not books. What you think the Internet and the Web are about? Books? Oh, give me a break!
All right, I better stop writing this anti-manifesto! Read my nonfiction, my pathos comes from there, from the realization of my own place and our sittuation. Sure, we are ugly like the monsters before the Titans, our poetry is barbaric, our mythology express itself in movies and music videos... So what? We learn fast. Look what cinema did in one century! Look around! Look, look! Because when you will take a second look, the world around will be different. We live in the space, which in past they called "time" -- and this river is fast like light -- no, you step twice in the same river, no way.... because this river is you and me.
